A Baby Photo a Day Keeps the Smoke Monster Away
Hi everyone!
OK, I have a bazillion things I should blog about, so of course the one I’m going to go with is more baby photos (yay!). :-) And also some complaining about Lost! (Yeah, I’m afraid writing about the Lost finale is kind of a job requirement for a geek with a blog.) But I’ll save that until the end, after I’ve warmed you up with some extremely cute baby photos. 🙂
But first! Everyone run around and back up all your important electronic devices, because something sinister is apparently afoot with the universe! Either that or I’m being punished: Both my laptop AND my DVR spontaneously HAD HEART ATTACKS AND DIED in the last five days. WHAT. Why would they DO THIS TO ME? Don’t I give them enough love? Are they, like Sunshine, feeling neglected in favor of New Puppy? I’m sorry, TV and computer! I promise I still love you, too! Would you like me to post adorable photos of you on my blog to prove it? I mean, what do you want from me?
Sheesh. Luckily my brilliant savvy husband was able to save all the important stuff off my laptop, but lost to the ether forever are the last two Friday Night Lights episodes and the Vampire Diaries finale which I was totally saving to cheer myself up next time I need some awesome TV. I MEAN SERIOUSLY.
Not to mention the gripping finale of America’s Best Dance Crew! The entire season of Life by the people who made Planet Earth but this time narrated by Oprah! The most recent Doctor Who! At least four Daily Shows and five Colbert Reports! The end of the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions which I was finally getting around to watching! That episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles which I was saving because it was just so awesome! That episode of Chuck which I was saving because it was just so awesome! Several episodes of Human Target which we were saving to watch later just for fun! The gripping finale of Castle! The gripping and apparently bewildering finale of FlashForward! OMG OMG OMG!
(What? No, I do not watch too much TV. Obviously I don’t watch ENOUGH TV, or else I wouldn’t be so far behind that I’d lose all this stuff when my DVR crashes! Clearly that is the moral of this story.)
Yes, it is pretty much exactly like the end of the world. ;-) Feel free to send condolences, sympathy, pitying looks, etc. in my general direction. DEEP SIGH.
Although, OK, I will concede that what is happening in the Gulf is worse, since Hulu can’t solve that problem. But I can’t even think about what’s going on down there, because TOO AWFUL. (Here are some ways you can help, if you’re looking for something to do about it.)
Anyway, at least I now have this shiny adorable tiny NEW laptop, which I’m still kind of figuring out. But I know one thing for sure about it: adorable! It is TIIIINY. I figure this’ll make it easier to pack for (a) school visits and (b) traveling with the baby, who, it turns out, requires a perfectly absurd amount of luggage.
We learned this by taking a thrilling Memorial Day traveling adventure, involving lots of driving and many fantabulous family members!
Jonah and his beautiful Aunt Kari!
Jonah and his goofy shaggy cousin Oliver!
Jonah meets Exersaucer for the first time…
Jonah promptly tries to eat Exersaucer
Jonah and his awesome Uncle Steve!
Jonah and one amazing grandmother!
Jonah and two amazing grandparents!
Awwwww. Huzzah! Relatives are the best, and Jonah got really really lucky with his! :-) It was super-fun, and he was a very patient baby about us dragging him all over the place. :-) I hope you all had a terrific Memorial Day weekend too!
So, right: I am in the “um, no” camp re: the Lost finale. As in, “um, no, throwing stuff around because it looks cool and then flinging it out the window with no explanation is no way to tell a story.” I don’t need answers to everything, but I do need some semblance of coherent structure and narrative sense. Which is not really my complaint about the finale specifically, but more about the whole last season, which felt like a big cop-out, storytelling-wise. They knew they had those last three seasons to wrap everything up, so…why didn’t they even try? It gives my editor-brain such a headache – if I’d been given a manuscript that was this messy, all over the place, unresolved, full of (apparently) irrelevant nonsense, and weirdly repetitive about unnecessary details, I would have been terribly terribly grumpy about it. I know it’s harder to edit & plan a TV show than a book, but they did have some time when they could have done that and made it really awesome, and it seems like they didn’t even want to.
But other people have complained about this much more eloquently than me, so I won’t go on and on, but I did want to share one of my favorites: Cat Valente’s rant (before the finale aired) about how the producers keep claiming in interviews that Lost is not a science fiction show. (Warning: lots of swearing! Don’t click on that unless you don’t mind LOTS of swearing!) The bit that made me laugh the most:
“But here’s the thing, guys. If you don’t want to get tarred with the SF brush, you don’t get to play with our toys, either. That means you do not get any of the following exciting action figures: monsters, immortal beings, time travel, alternate universes, glowcaves, Egyptian mythology, electromagnetic magic, insta-healing, psychic powers, Dark Lords, Lords of Light, magical touched by an angel fatecakes, teleportation, mystical islands, or bodily possession. Get your sticky hands off them–you’ll only break them.”
Ha ha! So true. Man, I lurve her.
And this is my other favorite Lost-related Internet thing:
Sigh. So so SO much cool stuff that just got forgotten about (especially everything with Walt and the stolen kids – totally irrelevant? apparently?). Blergh.
All right, sorry – too much complaining? OK, here you go:
Yay! Now everything is better. :-)
On the plus side: So You Think You Can Dance is back! Already! Hooray! :-) I don’t completely understand this All-Stars + ten finalists season yet, but I do know one thing: PASHA PASHA PASHA PASHA PASHA! So yeah, I’m there!
Next time: Another new book I’ve neglected to tell you about! Either that or photos of my last author visit! See, I do have real things to blog about…but surely you wanted Lost ranting and baby photos first, right? 😉
Quote of the Day: “I don’t know what is more disquieting: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing…or that it has ONLY FOUR TOES!” – Sayid, Lost, back when portentous statements like that made you think someone on the writing staff actually knew why the statue only had four toes. SIIIIIIIIIGH.